Weeks after the West End dimmed its lights for him, Sir Patrick Stewart has a memorial that will outlast all of us. The International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature has named a minor planet after him: (645530) Patrickstewart. The naming was published in the group’s bulletin (vol. 6, no. 18, dated 9 November), and the astronomer Eric Mamajek spotted it and shared it on Bluesky. File 770 then passed the news around fandom.
Going by the bulletin’s entry as it has been reposted online, the rock was first catalogued as 2007 TB185. M. Fiedler discovered it on 13 October 2007 from Radebeul, near Dresden. Its citation remembers Stewart as the British actor whose voice and Shakespearean command made him a star of stage and screen. It also names Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor X, his knighthood in 2010, and his charity work. (The bulletin itself is the authoritative version, if you would like to read it in full.) Nobody has photographed 645530 up close. Like most small asteroids, it’s a point of light that astronomers know by its orbit rather than its face. So our picture shows the captain himself instead.
Picard is in good company out there. The asteroid belt has long been a sort of Ten Forward for science fiction. 4659 Roddenberry is there, as are 31556 Shatner and 4864 Nimoy, and 68410 Nichols honours Nichelle Nichols. Literary SF is well represented too, from 4923 Clarke, 5020 Asimov and 9766 Bradbury to 2675 Tolkien. 25924 Douglasadams orbits within shouting distance of 18610 Arthurdent, and 127005 Pratchett is doubtless up to something. There is also 2309 Mr. Spock, though in fairness that one was named after its discoverer’s cat, who was named after Spock. The Federation has always been a broad church.
It is a lovely, quietly apt tribute. Stewart spent seven years telling the Enterprise to go where no one had gone before, and then went back to doing Shakespeare, which some would say is braver. Now a small piece of the solar system will carry his name around the Sun for billions of years. It won’t get there at warp speed, and it can’t tell anyone to make it so. Our obituary of Sir Patrick is here if you’d like to raise a cup of Earl Grey, hot.
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